In about a week’s time I will be eighteen, which is both good and bad. Starting with the good, being eighteen will mean YouTube will actually let me watch videos flagged with inappropriate content after I foolishly gave it my real birthdate. As for the bad, I will now look three years younger than my actual age rather than just two. Also, my childhood is effectively over, meaning if there is ever a disaster scenario where the ‘women and children first’ policy comes into play I will no longer be amongst the first rescued, and may have to actually do some rescuing.
Unnecessary evaluation aside, a birthday should be a time to celebrate. However, since a relative asked me if I will be doing anything for my birthday, it’s struck me that I don’t have enough friends to make a party socially or economically viable. I mean, in order to instigate the kind of atmosphere and circumstances you need for a party you probably need at least ten people. If you invite four to six, which is optimistically what I could muster, you really don’t have a party at all, more of just an awkward gathering. As for the economic viability, well, as far as I’m aware most teenagers run on a combination of alcohol and alcohol related anecdotes, so I’d probably need to buy some to ensure guests don’t just leave as soon as I offer them Tropicana. Thus even if each friend bought me a present worth eight pounds, I don’t think all the overheads would be covered, leaving me with financial debt on top of my disappointment that my friends only spent eight pounds on me.
Of course I’ve already encountered that moment where an email from a relative arrives asking what I want for my birthday and I have to somehow make it clear that I definitely want money without saying I want money. We’ve all had this problem and, as you’ll know, if you’re too ambiguous you may end up with the dreaded book voucher, which is a is a bit like wanting a Swiss army knife receiving a whisk. Fortunately a lot of the time I can actually ask for clothes. This is as clothes shopping for me is about as fun as accidentally staring at the sun (but longer) and mainly involves me convincing myself I don’t need to try things on because I’m “probably still a men’s small”.
Then there’s actually going into college on the day. We all try and avoid the one knob who’s unaware that year eight has ended and thinks that punching you in the arm is the best way to celebrate you going another year without dying. If you’re lucky there might be a bunch of girls who sing you happy birthday, only to follow it with a “WOOOOO!” so loud that you won't be able to hear yourself ask for a tissue to clean the blood out of your ears shortly afterwards.
Likewise, Facebook birthday messages provide another entertaining angle to proceedings. 2009’s total of three was resoundingly smashed in 2010, and although for a while I was worried my Facebook inactivity would mean no gap between last year’s and this year’s messages (ensuing an uber-long slur of duplicated happy birthdays), this embarrassment has not occurred. How you react to these messages I don’t know: it’s tempting to like them all, but then that takes ages, and if I only like the ones with correct grammar then that’s just prejudice. To be honest no-one knows what the etiquette is, but as long as you don’t point out that you barely even nod at the majority of well-wishers when you walk past them, it’s probably fine.
You’re probably thinking ‘go on Adrian, point out the awkwardness in writing thank you emails.’ Unfortunately as I’m over my usual word limit I’ll have to just put the phrases ‘do you say love from?’, ‘mail merge’, ‘can’t remember what they got me’ and leave you to fill in the rest.
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